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Post by Admin on Sept 5, 2014 15:02:06 GMT
The Ukrainian government and pro-Russia rebels have signed a truce deal to end almost five months of fighting. The two sides, meeting in the Belarusian capital Minsk, agreed to stop firing at 15:00 GMT. President Petro Poroshenko said he would do "everything possible" to end the bloodshed. The rebels said the truce had not changed their policy of advocating separation from Ukraine. More than 2,600 people have died since rebels stormed several eastern cities. The move prompted a military operation by Ukrainian forces to retake the cities. The rebels, who had largely been pushed back towards their strongholds of Donetsk and Luhansk, made new advances in recent days. Fighting was continuing on Friday around Mariupol, a coastal city about 110km (70 miles) south of Donetsk. В Мінську підписали попередній протокол до угоди про припинення вогню. Цей протокол має набути чинності в п'ятницю. Kiev officials and representatives of the two self-proclaimed republics in southeastern Ukraine have agreed to a ceasefire, as the contact group met behind closed doors in Belarus. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has confirmed the ceasefire agreement on his Twitter account. The truce agreement comes into force starting 6 pm local time (15:00 GMT). The president has ordered to cease fire starting at the time stated in the protocol. “I give the order to the chief of the General staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to cease fire, starting from 18.00 [local time] on September 5,” Poroshenko's statement says. Poroshenko then called on both the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry and the OSCE to provide international monitoring of compliance with the bilateral ceasefire. “We must do everything possible and impossible to stop bloodshed and put an end to people’s suffering,” the president said in a statement posted on his official website. Poroshenko expressed hope that both sides would comply with the ceasefire agreement. The self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic earlier confirmed the ceasefire agreement on its official Twitter account. Both Donetsk and Lugansk have said they are ready to lay down arms starting from 15:00GMT. Representatives of the rebel forces have said they will obey the ceasefire if Kiev follows suit. “Most of the points of the protocol correspond with our demands,” Lugansk’s leader Igor Plotnitsky said. “However, the ceasefire does not mean a shift from our course of breaking away from Ukraine. This is a compulsory measure,” he said.
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Post by Admin on Oct 7, 2014 22:48:44 GMT
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Beijing in November, a Japanese Foreign Ministry representative said Tuesday. The Japanese and Russian leaders have agreed to hold a meeting on the sidelines of APEC during a phone conversation, said Noriaki Ikeda, a representative of Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs as reported by Reuters. In September, Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov also said that Putin may meet with Abe on the sidelines of the upcoming APEC summit. President Putin is scheduled to visit Japan this fall, but the specific dates have not been set. Since Abe entered office in 2012, he has held multiple summits with Putin aiming to improve economic relations and to resolve the Kuril Islands dispute. However, with the deterioration of the situation in Ukraine, Japan, along with the United States, the European Union and other members of the Group of Seven industrialized nations introduced sanctions against Russia over its involvement. The Japanese sanctions are the softest of the G7 nations as Tokyo is seen as unwilling to ruin relations with Russia.
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Post by Admin on Oct 26, 2014 22:53:40 GMT
Pro-Europe parties led by a group backing President Petro Poroshenko swept a parliamentary election in Ukraine on Sunday, an exit poll showed, giving him a mandate to end a separatist conflict and pursue democratic reforms. The survey, issued after voting stations closed in the ex- Soviet republic, gave Poroshenko's bloc 23 percent of the votes cast for the 29 competing parties, ahead of the party of his ally, Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk, on 21.3 percent. A third pro-Europe party was in third place but a surprise was the strong performance of a group representing allies of ousted president Viktor Yanukovich. The Opposition Bloc, led by former Fuel Minister Yuri Boiko, secured 7.6 percent - enough to put his party into parliament. Though a fuller picture will not take shape for hours as the vote is counted, the exit polls confirmed expectations of a pro-Western assembly emerging from the first parliamentary election since Yanukovich's overthrow in February. The polls offered a reading only of party voting for 225 of the 450 seats in parliament and results from voting to single constituency seats will be known only in a few days time. With the party of the pro-Europe party, Selfhelp, in third place on 13.2 percent, Poroshenko should easily be able to forge a coalition to press on with plans to end the conflict in the east and move Ukraine toward the European mainstream. Other parties which seemed likely to enter parliament on the basis of the exit poll included the populist Radical Party and the nationalist Svoboda (Freedom) party. The Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party of former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko performed worse than many had expected though with 5.6 percent of the vote on party lists she also should enter parliament. Though the result for the Opposition Bloc, which has criticized Poroshenko's policies in the east, surprised many, other parties allied with the disgraced Yanukovich fared poorly, including the communists. The influence of pro-Russian groups looks set to be greatly diminished. This reality could fuel fresh tension in the future with Russia which condemned Yanukovich's ousting as a "fascist" coup and went on to annex Crimea in March and back anti-Kiev rebellions by separatists in the east.
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Post by Admin on Nov 3, 2014 22:50:13 GMT
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called an emergency meeting of his security chiefs for Tuesday to discuss new ways of dealing with the separatist challenge in the east after rebel elections that were denounced by Kiev and the West. The rogue votes, which Kiev says Russia encouraged, could create a new "frozen conflict" in post-Soviet Europe and further threaten the territorial unity of Ukraine, which lost control of its Crimean peninsula in March when it was annexed by Russia. Organisers of the twin ballots said insurgent leaders had emerged victorious in both Donetsk and Luhansk -- two Russian speaking areas of eastern Ukraine -- throwing down the gauntlet to Poroshenko, who was vehemently opposed to the election. In a statement, the Ukrainian president denounced the vote as an "electoral farce", repeating that it violated a bedrock deal struck in the Belarusian capital Minsk on Sept. 5 intended to pave the way for a settlement of the separatist problem. Calling for "adjustments" to be made in the way he handled the east, Poroshenko said he intended to scrap a law that would have offered "special status" to areas in the east including those controlled by the rebels. This would be among points to be discussed on Tuesday in a meeting of Ukraine's security and defence council, he said. The "special status" law envisaged allowing the Donetsk and Luhansk regions to run their own affairs and also offered separatist fighters freedom from prosecution. Kiev says the Minsk agreement provided only for election of local officials under Ukrainian law, and not for separatist ballots aimed at bringing in leaders of breakaway entities who seek close association or even union with Russia.
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Post by Admin on Nov 13, 2014 22:38:54 GMT
Vehicles apparently used to transport soldiers' bodies have been seen crossing the Russian-Ukrainian border, monitors from Europe's security body have said. The OSCE monitors said in one case a vehicle marked "Cargo 200" - Russia's military code for soldiers killed in action - crossed from Russia into Ukraine on Tuesday and later returned. Ukraine and the West accuse Russia of sending its soldiers to fight with separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine. The Kremlin denies the allegations. More than 4,000 people have died in the conflict between Ukraine's military and pro-Russian rebels in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Nearly a million people have fled their homes since the fighting started in April, a month after Russia annexed Ukraine's southern Crimea peninsula. The violence in the east has continued despite a ceasefire deal struck in Minsk, Belarus, in September, with both sides accusing each other of shelling and other violations of the agreement. The border crossing on the Ukrainian side - Dovzhansky - is currently controlled by the separatist rebels. In Kiev, Ukrainian security spokesman Andriy Lysenko said that five vehicles "belonging to the Rostov funeral service" had crossed the border on Tuesday. He alleged that they had transported "Russian military men". Ukraine has repeatedly stated that a number of Russia's regularly troops have been killed in fighting in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Moscow denies the allegations as propaganda, but admits that what it describes as "Russian volunteers" are fighting alongside the rebels.
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